Wofford football fans should be glad they don’t have to worry about this.

Head coach Mike Ayers has been on the job for 25 years and when he leaves the school, it will be in retirement. Hopefully, that is a long way off.

But today’ opponent for the first round of the FCS playoffs, New Hampshire, is dealing with swirling rumors that its head coach, Sean McDonnell, is a hot candidate for the opening at Boston College.

McDonnell, in his 14th season at New Hampshire, has had the Wildcats in the playoffs for nine straight years and in the top 25 every week since 2004. He works at the summer football camps at Boston College and was an assistant there in the mid-1980s.

Boston College fired Frank Spaziani last weekend after the Eagles’ season, his fourth with the team, ended with a 2-10 record. The Boston Globe listed McDonnell as a candidate, along with Cleveland Browns quarterback coach Mark Whipple, who won a Division I-AA title in 1998 at Massachusetts; University of Miami head coach Al Golden; Notre Dame defensive coordinator Bob Diaco; Kent State head coach Darrell Hazell; Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen, a New Hampshire native; and Harvard’s Tim Murphy, former coach at Maine.

McDonnell isn’t denying that he would be interested – and, of course, he would be interested. He hasn’t said much, only that he has “a lot of other things in life that I have to worry about other that the BC job.”

I’m not sure it will be a distraction from the biggest game of the year for New Hampshire. But it’s certainly some kind of factor and in the backs of everybody’s minds.

About This Blog

Todd Shanesy is an award-winning sports writer who has been twice honored nationally by the Associated Press and more than three dozen times by the South Carolina Press Association. He is a native of Troy, Ohio, and studied journalism at Marshall University (1987 graduate). Shanesy is a former sports editor of the Florence (S.C.) Morning News and has been with the Spartanburg Herald-Journal since 1991.

Follow him two ways on Twitter: @ToddShanesySHJ and @TerrierTracker (for everything Wofford-related).